A Trial of 10 Session Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Eating Disorders at CCI

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A Trial of 10 Session Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Eating Disorders at CCI

A trial of 10-session cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT-T) for eating disorders at CCI.

To celebrate World Eating Disorders Action Day on June 2nd 2019, we share some recent innovations developed within our own Eating Disorders Program. There are currently long waitlists to access evidence-based interventions for eating disorders. This has resulted in an increased need for shorter, cost-effective psychological therapies that are also effective to ease the burden on the healthcare system and ensure that individuals can access appropriate treatment more quickly. Professor Glenn Waller and colleagues at the University of Sheffield recently developed 10-session Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for eating disorders – an outpatient treatment that adopts some of the key elements of CBT for eating disorders (CBT-ED) such as in-session weighing, exposure, nutrition, cognitive restructuring, body image work, and relapse prevention. Initial evaluations of CBT-T have shown it to be as effective as longer treatments for eating disorders, and that it changes to both behaviour and thinking. It also results in improvements to secondary outcomes such as depression and anxiety.

The Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) was recently granted funding from the Mental Health Commission to run a pilot study of CBT-T to examine the effectiveness of the intervention in our routine clinical setting. Clinicians receive supervision directly from Professor Waller, and are excited to be finding new ways to treat eating disorders quickly and effectively. It is also hoped that shorter, effective interventions such as CBT-T can be disseminated more widely across WA Health in the future.